Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@NintendoByNature Rise is touted as one of the best, but previous entries were better. I personally liked World more than Rise, given it did a lot of stuff better, with the only caveat being weaponry and armor not being as interesting or silly.

The main criticisms raised against Monster Hunter Rise are that it's too easy, it takes out the need to track the monsters and that the end game wasn't as good as World's, (although it improved in Sunbreak). The monsters though, are far more varied than World's, (especially base World's), my main criticism with World is that it's basically Monster Hunter: Jurassic Park.
I personally prefer Rise to World, (which in itself seems to be an unpopular opinion), as I prefer the Monsters and the move sets that the weapons have. I believe that if they manage to bring the best bits of Rise and World into the next Monster Hunter game, then it'll be a banger. World had the most atmospheric maps, (although the forest was a bit of a slog), the monster tracking was great, the investigations and more importantly the difficulty that Rise lacked.
The free updates for Rise were a bit disappointing, but we did get Amatsu, which was a worthy and necessary addition I think.
Also I should add that all past Monster Hunter games, (if memory serves), have had tower defense missions. They've always been a bit of a slog, Rise's is faster paced but it's still not great unfortunately.

@Arnie4490 I know World had like two, but they weren’t as overwhelming as the rampages. The rampages genuinely induced anxiety into me and didn’t feel fun to play through at all.

My main complaint with Rise is including smaller versions of monsters that don’t exist in the game at all, along with how they kept putting in recolor after recolor. World did the same, but the base roster felt like it made up for that. Rise only introduces a few new monsters, a few returning, and majority are just recolored. I lost all interest in Sunbreak, and didn’t even get to the expansion itself. Partially because I had to play alone, but also because the grind got pretty bad.

@VoidofLight I definitely agree that they weren't fun and I can see your point about how they would induce anxiety as I avoided them until I absolutely had to do them to proceed.
The smaller versions of monsters in Rise were definitely annoying, the Zamites had me hopeful for a Zamtrios return but alas it wasn't to be. I didn't feel that the recolours were too much of an issue until the post Sunbreak title updates as every game has done it, (I'm not a fan for the most part either), but the title updates were basically 90% recolours with 2 returning monsters. By the time Amatsu was added, I beat it and then I was done with Rise for the most part.

@Arnie4490 The title updates being recolors sort of killed a ton of my interest in the game. I was also hoping that Zamtrios would return. Crossed my fingers for Sunbreak and the title updates, but we never got it. Same with Tetsucobra.

@NeonPizza That's fair, I think. It is in the name; this is the ultimate, definitive version of Smash. I think the goal of this game was to be a culmination of everything in the series and bring everyone back, rather than making really big changes to the gameplay.

Ultimate is my personal favorite in the series since it's the one I started with. I have gone back to play Melee and Brawl though, and I do think those also have unique things to appreciate. I do think it would be cool if the next Smash is something truly unique, though. A weird shake-up to the gameplay or the next-gen facelift as you mentioned would be really nice.

Smash Ultimate is let down by its terrible netcode. I can play literally everything else on my wifi without issue. Why can't they figure it out with Smash Bros?

@Ralizah Agreed, especially for a fighting game you'd think they'd get their act together when it comes to online. I even play with a wired connection and it hardly makes a difference. It's easily the worst part of Ultimate.

I like lego city undercover.
Its like GTA but lego and it runs fine imo, its fun to just drive around the city messing around when playing 2 player.

@StarPoint It's disgraceful. People like to blame NSO, but I don't have this problem with most other Switch games online. The developers don't receive nearly enough blame for this aspect of the game.

@Ralizah Sakurai is funny but sometimes he is kind of annoying.
The thing that ticked me off was when he said that once he dies Smash games would start to suck (or they would struggle to keep making games that he works in) like bro im sure they would be completely fine, take a page out of Myamotos book. (he said that they would be fine once he dies)

Seeing Rise talked about above, is it time for me to finally drop my, I hated Sunbreak take? Cause I hated Sunbreak.

I appreciate a small, but very vocal, slice of the audience wanted to tell everyone that base Rise wasn't their Monster Hunter. They wanted the slow, drawn out, brutally punishing, slogs of past games back for some reason. I don't understand it, I never will.

I thought Rise showed the perfect foundation for a better future for the series going forwards. And I sadly think based on how Sunbreak played out, Rise is not the future of the franchise like I wanted.

Sunbreak took all of the joy of base Rise and replaced it with brutal spikes in difficulty, and cruel punishments if you weren't perfect for every frame of your gameplay. The joy of base Rise for me was the power I felt as I slowly mastered my weapon, and built out my gear set to suit my playstyle. To me there is no fun in feeling powerless, but despite a wealth of new abilities and armour based skills, powerless was all I felt in Sunbreak. I hated it.

@Pizzamorg The whole point of these expansion DLCs is providing the sort of challenge and mechanical depth that series vets come for. It's similar to the approach Nintendo often takes with their games, where the main story is fairly accessible for younger players, and then much of the challenging content comes during the endgame.

That said, Sunbreak's G-rank equivalent difficulty wasn't nearly as intimidating as what I encountered in a game like MH4U. You're probably better off just sticking with the base versions of these games going forward.

@GalaxicGlobe Never a huge fan of the cult of personality that forms around some of these developers, and it's hard to avoid concluding that some of them take this adulation to heart. All I'll say in regard to Sakurai in the interest of politeness!

Maybe in the past, but it didn't have to be this way here. Rise showed a different (and to me, far superior) version of a how a Monster Hunter game could be, that included the difficulty paradigm. Sunbreak could still have delivered everything it delivered, without the unnecessary and astronomical difficulty spike and the complete removal of all player power. But clearly they buckled to the pressure of the small vocal minority who complained Rise was too fun and not miserable enough.

The rampages in Rise sucked, and I do hope they never return in future games.

Sunbreak went a long way toward alleviating most of my disappointment with Rise, though, so it's still very much one of my favorite Switch titles.

@Pizzamorg It's fine to enjoy easy games, but base Rise was too easy for a lot of vet players. To the point where it just wasn't nearly as fun, because, for a lot of us, the thrill of MonHun is found in mastering challenges that seemed insurmountable at first.

Rise's crazy mechanics mean even the expansion never hits that level of challenge for many of us, but it was challenging enough to be fun again.

Which is the thing: you enjoy games more when you don't have to struggle at all. Whereas other people enjoy games like this more when there's a struggle involved. Capcom's strategy with Rise allowed them to cater to both sets of players. Or, if you want to look at it in a glass half-empty way, only partially satisfy both sets of players lol.

In fairness, the Sunbreak expansion doesn't even start getting properly difficult until the point where you complete the story, so you should still be able to enjoy the main campaign.

I would say base World is significantly harder than base Rise was. And I would say earlier games before that were even harder still. So if the Monster Hunter design moving forwards is the base game being tuned like Rise was, and expansions being tuned like base World or higher, I'd be fine with that. My fear with Sunbreak was that it was a total buckling, that the vocal minority won and we'd never get a fun Monster Hunter game like Rise again. If we get a Rise style Monster Hunter game every new base release, then you can all have your expansions that make you miserable. I'll just play the base games moving forwards and skip the expansions.

@Pizzamorg I genuinely don't think so. These games used to get re-releases with a harder difficulty setting (G-rank). Now the G-rank equivalent is an expansion DLC instead of a full re-release. The plan was ALWAYS for the expansion to be significantly harder, as that has been the traditional pattern of this series.

World being more accessible was a huge part of its appeal, and while Rise didn't do World numbers, it still significantly outsold other older entries. Capcom isn't going to be stupid and go full FromSoft on the series and return to the glory days of the base campaign kicking everyone's butt.

Out of interest, how would you say World was in terms of difficulty for you? And did you ever play Iceborne?

@Pizzamorg Welcome to G-Rank. The game stops playing around and expects you to learn the monsters you're fighting against, along with grind a ton. This series isn't for those who don't want to sink time into the grind effectively. If you already dislike souls games, this game isn't really for you.

@NintendoByNature @FishyS Yeah. It's cool that people like the games and I wanted to get into the series, but it just wasn't meant to be. Another Capcom series I couldn't really get into was Street Fighter, and that's only because I'm not good at fighting games, lol. I do like the Mega Man series, though.

Yawn.

It is honestly hard to say. I think my first game was maybe Tri on the Wii? But I was young, played it very casually and not very long. So World was really the first game in the series I played properly and to date I’d consider it one of the hardest games I’ve ever “conquered”.

Rise felt significantly easier, and to begin with I wasn’t playing with the same friends I played World with, because it was on Switch which they didn’t have. But by the time I played Rise, I had played hundreds of hours of World / Iceborne and gone back to some older games too. So it is kind of chicken and the egg, would I have found Rise harder than World if I had played it first? I dunno.

And yeah I played Iceborne too. I found World so hard at the time, the difficulty in Iceborne didn’t feel like an astronomical leap from the base game in the way Sunbreak did to me after base Rise. To be honest, a lot of World / Iceborne’s difficulty came from all those crazy one shot moves and just sort of how slow and clunky everything was, rather than moment to moment difficulty. The lightbulb moment for me in World when it all clicked was switching to the Insect Glaive, as it gave you a level of speed and mobility nothing else did in that game, and much of the challenge became easier to overcome when I could just dance through the sky. A common lesson I guess, given the shift to the Attack on Titan style of action in Rise.

Sunbreak was mostly difficult in a different way, mostly in that it sorta tricks you by punishing you for doing anything Rise conditioned and trained you to do. Base Rise is all about high tempo, aggression and pressure. Sunbreak is very much a shift back to the older games, where it is about patience, picking your moments and having good defence. You play Sunbreak like base Rise, and you are about to be midair combo spammed that goes so long, you could take a smoke break, a bathroom break and make your dinner, and come back and still be getting smashed into the floor. It is not easy to do a complete 180 like that, when you’ve spent 100s of hours playing one way, and now suddenly need to play completely differently with the same toolset.

Funnily enough, while the damage was poo, my lightbulb moment in Sunbreak was an inverse response to my one in World. In World I needed to become faster, smoother, to overcome the challenge. Sunbreak, I had to learn to slow back down again, so switching to the Lance was one of the best experiences it had. It was about the friendliest way one could recondition themselves for the pace and rhythm, decoupling myself from everything I learnt from the base.

I think Lance is probably going to be my main going forwards, it is probably the least fun and least sexiest of the weapons, but you won’t be your best Hunter, until you’ve mastered the lance, and learned and gained all the tools and skills that come with doing that.